The Nutcracker [Hardcover]

Shana Alexander (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 444 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday; First Edition edition (May 7, 1985)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385192681
• ISBN-13: 978-0385192682
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.7 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,439,439 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Charming, May 2, 2000

By 

Dennis Littrell (SoCal) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Nutcracker (Hardcover)

Oh boy. Just how much intense, stupid madness can one family harbor? The story reads like a parody of human behavior. Alexander's narrative, chuck full of detail and precise diction and some wonderful turns of phrase, often spirals into something like a long-running slapstick comedy too bizarre for television. The horror of neglect and greed, hatred, prejudice and violence are all here, but the form they take in this tale is so absurd sometimes that you have to laugh aloud at the sick antics.

The three most important characters are: Franklin Bradshaw, the miserly patriarch, apparently murdered by his grandsons at the insistence of his youngest daughter, Frances, an incredibly depraved creature nobody could have invented, and Berenice, mother of Frances and husband of Franklin, a slavish practitioner of "smotherly love." They hail from Utah where Franklin is a non-practicing Mormon. He has spent a lifetime of working sixteen hours a day and has, through his auto parts business and oil and land leases, amassed a fortune estimated in the hundreds of millions of (1981) dollars. Frances and everybody else in the family would like to get their hands on the money, and each of them is deathly afraid that the others are scheming to cheat them out of their fair share, and they are. But Frances, the youngest of the four Bradshaw children, is particularly evil. She is the pretty baby of the family that no one could ever say no to, who always got away with everything as a child and expects that to continue. When the world says, "Whoa, child, no!" she fights back with every scheme and wile she can muster, committing nearly any and all crimes imaginable. She usually gets away with them because she has a quality about her that prevents anyone from saying no to her, at least anyone in her family. She is perhaps as neglectful a mother as one can imagine, physically beating and mentally torturing her children, using them as pawns in her wars with her two ex-husbands and her parents and sisters. She is an alcoholic, a drug addict, a paranoid schizophrenic, a bigot, a class-conscious low life, who hates blacks, Jews and poor white trash; a woman who is as trashy as one can get, yet a woman who manages to manipulate her mother and father and others so that she always has time to drink and whore around and send her children to private schools (even as she pushes them out the door in the morning in their underwear without breakfast or bath).

But enough. It's a good read, and I have to admire Alexander's writing ability. She makes it all very vivid and she does it with style and grace and without taking up some phony political position or presenting some shallow psychology. She sparkles the narrative with insight and bon mots and never slows down or bores.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars FRANCES SCHREUDER IS A FASCINATING WOMAN, July 11, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Nutcracker (Mass Market Paperback)

Shana Alexander, a great woman writer, author of "Very Much a Lady" the story of Jean Haris, helps you understand one of the most fascinating and horryfing criminal cases and trials of the century. That of a manipualtive mother with a sick, greed-filled mind willing to sacrifice her own son in order to lay her hands on her father's fortune, he being one of the richest men in Utah. But luck wasn't available for the cold-blooded Manhattan socialite, and she is put to jail. An excellent book of investigation of one of the most bizarre cases of greed in America's history

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A review of NUTCRACKER by Shana Alexander, January 19, 2002

By 

Frank Werner (New York USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nutcracker: Money, Madness, Murder : A Family Album (G K Hall Large Print Book Series) (Hardcover)

If you want to read an excellent, detailed and well written his tory of the Bradshaw family do not read this book. Instead read Jonathan Coleman's "At Mother's Request". This book needs alot of editing. The story is better told in chronological order, not by jumping around in time. The story of the murder of Franklin Bradshaw by his daughter, with his grandson acting as the "hit man" is a fascinating one. I just don't think that Ms. Alexander is a particularly capable writer. This book is both disorganized and overly speculative. Still, the story has no equal in its ability to hold your attention.